Age of Legends

Chapter 257 Lost the World
Before we knew it, 2000 had passed.

On the eve of the official start of New Year's Day 2001, the QQ internal group released the plans for the new year.

QQ Membership was launched three days ago. QQ Members enjoy exclusive privileges, such as customizable avatars, accelerated leveling, and an "Avatar interface." The advertisement claims that it is your virtual avatar, another "you," your social image on the internet. You can dress it up, change clothes, accessories, backgrounds, and even your avatar's car and vehicle as needed.

QQ membership costs 10 yuan per month, while the clothes, accessories, and various props in Avatar require payment using QQ coins.

Yes, the Avatar project originated from Zhang Chen's suggestion. With the launch of QQ groups, the server demand behind Tencent was increasing. The money invested by Wang Bowen, after surviving the most critical period, was also running out of steam. In fact, Tencent's advertising revenue has now increased to more than one million yuan a month, but this part is not stable and may decrease sharply with the arrival of the Internet winter. Therefore, everyone was actively exploring open source paid models to alleviate the financial pressure on the accounts, and QQ membership came into being.

On this basis, Zhang Chen's Avatar project is refreshing, with promotional ideas such as "another you on the Internet" and "a social image in the virtual world", giving people a sense of entering the trend of the Internet age.

Humanity's pursuit of Avatars and utopian ideals has never ceased; perhaps everyone needs a refuge that allows them to escape the world around them. Early examples include the Peach Blossom Spring, and later, the legend of Shangri-La, both of which have, to some extent, captivated generations.

Later, with the advent of the internet age, people called browsing web pages and logging into software on a computer "surfing the internet," as if people had truly entered another world and were roaming in that world of information.

Then another term emerged: "virtual world," which in turn gave rise to various other concepts, such as "metaverse." Humans are very good at creating a world of spiritual sustenance to escape reality. This always forms a trend, and it cycles every now and then. Some create concepts, while others exploit people.

When Tencent first launched its QQ membership service, it was quite a dismal failure. For about six months, very few users paid for it. This was partly due to the lack of a robust payment system and partly due to issues with the payment channels.

Therefore, Zhang Chen, combining the current technical capabilities and server pressure, first launched Avatar Show. Avatar Show targets the paid system, which, to put it bluntly, is about creating consumer desire and getting users to spend real money to customize their online social avatars.

This Avatar-themed show also includes a pet feature.

The Avatar Show projects a user's emotions, allowing them to customize their social avatar and convey the concept of "what kind of person I am." The pet feature, however, is truly an emotional projection of a virtual pet. Anyone can adopt a pet, and adopting a pet grants access to over twenty basic functions, including feeding and playing. These basic functions are free, but to dress up the pet or purchase more advanced offline grooming services, users need to use QQ coins, thus creating a consumer habit among users.

The Avatar Show and QQ Pet features can fully support the current QQ Coin spending pool. Zhang Chen felt that having Tencent develop these two features first would be enough.

As for later features like stealing vegetables, Plants vs. Zombies, adopting a cow, and other similar gameplay and spending pools, these can be added gradually in the future.

Furthermore, we need to establish payment channels, using QQ coins as a means to set up these channels first.

The reason why Tencent's earliest membership service and Q coins failed to take off for more than half a year after their launch was precisely because there was no channel. Users who wanted to upgrade their membership and buy Q coins could only send money to Tencent's account through the post office.

The later contribution of "Legend" was to create a payment path, namely, to use offline internet cafes and newsstands across the country to facilitate the purchase of physical game cards and realize a convenient payment model.

Therefore, on the one hand, Tencent recruited regional agents across the country in advance, and then produced physical QQ cards with face values ​​of 15 yuan, 30 yuan, and 60 yuan, which were then distributed to all parts of the country through regional agents.

On the other hand, they asked Pony Ma to negotiate a partnership with a telecommunications company to use mobile payment to recharge QQ coins and game cards.

Zhang Chen also had a personal motive: he hoped to use Tencent's channel to pave the way for future sales of game cards for the game "Wanxiang Jianghu".

The distributors of physical game cards were initially discussed internally by Xiao Ma and his team, who believed that offering higher rebates would facilitate distribution, even up to 6% off. However, Zhang Chen expressed in a QQ group that this would lead to a future oversupply of QQ coins.

To put it bluntly, the Q-coin membership model currently being promoted by Pony Ma (Ma Huateng, founder of Tencent) is just a trial run, hence the high discounts offered initially. However, the downside is that it could lead to an overabundance of Q-coins, impacting the company's virtual currency system. Therefore, Zhang Chen proposed a solution: the lowest-level agents receive a 10% discount, regional agents receive 15%, and those working with post offices and telecommunications bureaus receive a 20% discount. Those who sign off at Pony Ma's level can obtain a 30% discount.

This plan directly establishes the Penguin's virtual currency system, which can better guarantee the orderly development in the future and prevent a repeat of the chaotic situation of the past.

So when the QQ membership program was launched, the Avatar Show, along with the client upgrade and redesign, caused quite a stir online.

At first, some regional agents were unfamiliar with the process and the prepaid cards were not yet in place.

However, newsstands and internet cafes across the country started receiving inquiries like, "Boss, do you have any QQ coins/cards? The QQ messages say they're available in our city now! What, not in your internet cafe?" "Longteng Internet Cafe has them, go to Longteng!"

"Let's go!"

With such a competitive situation, once the regional distribution was in place, the supply of Q coins and game cards immediately increased steadily.

Zhang Chen marveled at the convenience of social networks. In the past, traditional media magazines would often have to include a frontispiece in the magazine to announce news or sales channels, requiring a considerable timeframe. Now, even Tencent announcing offline channels for purchasing physical cards only requires a mass message to users. In fact, even recruiting nationwide distributors was done this way; the published email address received thousands of emails within a day, and a distributor network was quickly established.

Even now, during breaks at Yude High School, Zhang Chen can hear students discussing the Avatar Show and QQ Pets.

Some people are also talking about the issue of membership top-ups.

"Ten yuan a month for a membership, that's so expensive!"

"Top up, it's only ten yuan, and you get lots of VIP badges. There are also free gifts from the Avatar Show and a fast-growth gift pack for QQ Pets! It's actually not expensive! I checked the fast-growth gift pack for QQ Pets online, and it costs twenty QQ coins to buy it separately, which is so expensive!"

"I'll wait and see; I don't have that much money right now..."

"Whatever, I'm going to recharge anyway. Don't worry about skipping the Purple Cloud pack!"

"Damn, I'll fight you rich people to the death..."

Zhang Chen hasn't yet introduced the concept of a membership growth value, a concept that might benefit user loyalty later. However, it's clearly inappropriate at the moment. Considering that it's being introduced two years earlier than in later times, both the AFK time and active days are problematic. Firstly, personal computer penetration isn't as high, and secondly, computer games are already considered a social ill, currently being criticized. With QQ's rising popularity, adding this membership growth value could easily lead to users trying to maximize AFK time, causing social news issues.

Adopting a pet involves posting a rolling news update on social media, which is convenient for promotion and also provides emotional value to users.

So when Zhang Chen logged into QQ, he saw a scrolling message: "Your friend 'Whale Fall Sea' has adopted a pet - Little Orange."

Once a user has decided on the pet to adopt, including its appearance and nickname, a wide-area message will be sent.

Zhang Chen froze, then clicked to see Zhuang Yanyue's Avatar Show homepage. It featured a girl with wavy hair, a chibi version of Zhuang Yanyue, wearing a sweater and fluffy short socks. Next to her was a Q-pet wearing a red scarf, with the words "Little Orange" prominently displayed above its head.

Zhang Chen's face darkened. "You're not using a pun, are you?"

After exiting the chat, Zhang Chen checked Shen Nuoyi's account, "shinenuo." Her avatar wasn't heavily customized; she was still a girl with pigtails wearing a blue basic dress. But she now had a pet beside her.

The title above is "Morning Pig".

Meanwhile, Pei Yan saw Shen Nuoyi online. He clicked on her profile as if possessed and saw her avatars and pets.

He then logged out of QQ.

That year, he won first place in the provincial physics competition.

He stood on the stage to receive the award and was treated like a hero when he returned to the Foreign Languages ​​School.

The teachers and students welcomed him as if he were a triumphant Alexander, but all the foreigners, seeing their king's expression, felt as if they had lost the whole world.

(End of this chapter)